Managing Leadership^®

In his preface to The Effective Executive, Peter Drucker offers the following intriguing suggestion:

That one can truly manage other people is by no means adequately proven. But one can always manage oneself.”

Both statements here are interesting, because the first cautions us about what we can do, and the other explains that it is generally sufficient to do what we can. Unfortunately, it must be said that the second assertion is not adequately proven, either. Indeed, a movement that had begun when Drucker wrote those words continues in full flood, today; a movement that exhorts managers to develop expansive views of themselves, personally, and based on this, of their importance and roles in their firms and society as a whole. This ill-discipline serves the field poorly.

Drucker agreed, on the one hand, that we can learn to be better managers - not by attempting to kid ourselves that we can, or ought to try to, burst the limits of our individual abilities, but rather by learning the roles of management and practicing them until we achieve competence:

But to be effective does not require special gifts, special aptitude, or special training. Effectiveness as an executive demands doing certain - and fairly simple - things. It consist of a small number of practices.”

Moreover:

. . . there seems to be little correlation between a man’s effectiveness and his intelligence . . .”

Who among us won’t take some comfort from that?

Regarding the trend to promote the singularly gifted virtuoso as “leader” of our organizations, he added:

But we are not going to breed a new race of supermen. We will have to run our organizations with men as they are.”

And, as he argued, that is both well within our means and sufficient to the need. In my view, it is also far preferable to the alternative of turning our organizations over to putative universal geniuses. History is full of examples of the disasters this school of thought has provoked in politics; it is becoming overburdened with such examples in business, as well.

Tomorrow we will conduct a brief review of the general category of “certain - and fairly simple - things” that Drucker said managers do.

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Please be sure see all the posts in this series!

1. Marketing Management
2. Defining Management
3. Understanding what we do
4. Understanding who we are
5. Faith or deeds?
6. Doing “certain - and fairly simple - things”
7. The fundamental requirements
8. The basic resource of the business enterprise
9. Making tasks meaningful
10. Making it matter
11. Setting the rules
12. Book Review: Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

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Similar Posts:

• Practicing Management: doing “certain - and fairly simple - things”
• Practicing Management: “The basic resource of the business enterprise”
• Book Review: Management: Tasks, Responsibilites, Practices
• Practicing Management: Understanding who we are
• Practicing Management: The fundamental requirements

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